How Game Designers Solved These 11 Problems

The coolest feature in Gears of War is,  definitely, the active reload. Here's how it works: every time you reload your gun,  you're invited to play a tiny mini-game. A cursor swipes along a line and you can hit  reload again to try and win a prize.

Land here, and you'll reload super fast. Land here,  and you'll also get a weapon boost - like, more powerful bullets. But land  anywhere else and your gun will jam.

It's a great feature - adding tension,  skill, and flourish to one of the most basic actions in shooters. But, it also left  Epic with a problem. You see, in playtesting, the devs found that advanced players  were nailing that perfect reload, constantly giving them better  bullets and, thus, an advantage over the enemies.

So they had to rebalance  all the foes, making them more resistant. But, beginner players often ignored the  active reload entirely. So they didn't get that weapon buff - and were now fighting these  overpowered bad guys with weak bullets.

Agh! So much of game design is about solving problems  like this. You come up with an idea - and then find out that it's flawed in some way.

It's  unbalanced. It's confusing. It's not leading to the gameplay you intended.

Or it's clashing  with some other feature in the game. And, as a designer, you can often find yourself going  around in circles to find the right solution. Surely there's a better way?

Well, in this episode, let's look at how the  best game creators go about solving problems in their design - to give us some take  home tips for fixing future issues. Oh, and I'll also let you know how Epic fixed  the active reload. The solution is.

. . pretty ingenious.

I'm Mark Brown,  and this is Game Maker's Toolkit. So, before we start coming up with  solutions. .

. we need to make sure that we've accurately identified the problem. During the development of Dying Light, the game's  director had an issue: weapons break too fast, and so he told the designers to increase their  durability.

But, lead designer Maciej 'Matt' Binkowski didn't want to fiddle with that stat  because it might mess up the game's economy. So, instead, he dug deeper, asked more questions, and got to the real problem - players could only  kill a few zombies before their weapon broke. So, to fix this, the designer didn't touch weapon  durability at all, but instead lowered the health points of the enemies.

It solved the  problem, and basic combat felt better too. Binkowski suggests designers step back and  figure out the root cause of the problem, before trying to solve the  issue that's been reported. We also need to make sure that everyone  is on the same page about the problem.

Just before Astroneer left Early Access, the  designers wanted to improve the game's crafting system - but had very different ideas about the  issue. One designer thought it was too simple, and so wanted to add more machines  and resource chains. Another actually thought it was already too complicated,  with fiddly, unintuitive processes.

This, naturally, led to disagreements - but it  was only when they stepped back and really broke the problem down, that they realised they were  talking about two completely different issues. One was looking at the shallow gameplay loop,  from a wide-angle systems perspective. The other was looking at the operation of complex machines,  through the lens of moment-to-moment interactions.

Now, seeing eye-to-eye, they could  solve the underlying problem, and fix both issues at once. Those  fiddly machines could be overhauled, and then used to expand the simple crafting  loop to create a more interesting economy. Okay, so hopefully we now know what the  real problem is.

So how do we fix it? Well, here are some best practices  from across the industry. Approach one - quickly iterate  through possible solutions.

When Blizzard was making Diablo 3, they wanted  to fix a problem from the previous game: potion spamming. Players would often  just guzzle endless potions during combat - and so enemies needed to  do massive one-shot hits to have any chance of actually killing the player.  Unfortunately, Blizzard didn't really know how to solve this thorny issue -  so, they just tried a bunch of ideas.

How about - potions become less effective  if you drink them in quick succession? Slap a build together and. .

. that didn't  work - if a potion only heals for 25%, players would just chug four of them. Okay, how about you automatically heal - but only  if enemies are unaware of your presence.

Make a build and. . .

no good. Enemy awareness just wasn't  obvious enough. Alright, let's simplify the rule: if three seconds pass without you taking  damage, you start to heal.

Build the game and. . .

didn't work. Players would run away  from fights, acting passive and defensive. That's the opposite of what Blizzard  wanted - players should be aggressive.

Ah! But, that did point to the solution:  make enemies randomly drop crystal balls filled with health, when you kill  them. This removes potion spamming, it's simple to understand, and it makes  players act aggressively.

Job done. This approach is all about trying stuff and  using the results to guide your way to the solution. Like, that first solution with  the diluted potions, designer Wyatt Cheng says "we weren't totally thrilled with  this solution as we were putting it in, but we did it anyway.

We knew that even though  this might not be a solution that we're willing to ship with, it was something that was going  to teach us a lot more about the problem". Approach two - identify the levers In a fascinating GDC talk about game  balance, Bungie's Jaime Griesemer explains how his team fixed the sniper rifle  in Halo 3. You see, the rifle was broken: players were able to acquire long-range  targets too quickly between shots - and, they could also use the sniper rifle in close  quarters for massive damage.

It was overpowered. Fixing an issue like this means first identifying  which levers can be pulled - and which ones can't. For Griesemer, you can't shorten the range of  a sniper rifle.

And you can't nerf its damage, reduce its accuracy, or stop it doing insta-kill  headshots, either. Those factors all define the sniper rifle - you can't change those stats  without breaking the very identity of the weapon. So by removing those options, it became clear  what can be changed.

Stats like the number of shots in the clip. The length of the reload. The  time it takes to zoom in.

The time between shots. Whether you can do insta-kill headshots outside  of the scope. And the maximum ammo you can carry.

The right call was changing the  time between shots. It stopped players from instantly acquiring and  shooting a target after each bullet, and it made it much less effective in close  quarters now you can't spam the trigger. In the end, it was enough to increase the  time from 0.

5 seconds, to 0. 7 seconds. By figuring out what can and can't be changed,  you can better focus your attention on potential solutions.

However - this must be done carefully.  Sometimes the target really is that thing you've convinced yourself cannot be changed. As  always, be prepared to kill your darlings.

Approach three - make big changes Okay, so I just talked about a change of 0. 2  seconds - a pretty small change that had a big impact on the game. But sometimes,  you want to swing for the fences.

Less than a month before the first Civilization was  released, Sid Meier realised that the game had pacing issues. So he decided to solve the  problem by reducing the size of the map. Not by a few tiles.

Or a few  percentage points. He cut that sucker in half. And this worked wonders  - the game moved faster, felt snappier, and it better captured that true Civ  feeling of relentless forward progress.

We've already talked about iterating on a problem  - but development time is limited, so if you're only ever changing things by tiny amounts - a  5% nerf here, a 6% buff there - you may never get to the right answer. Or you'll find out too  late that your solution would never have worked. Meier's advice is to "double it, or cut it in  half".

With such dramatic changes, you'll very quickly see if the change has an effect - and if  you go too far, you can always drop back down to readjust. Talking about that Civ map, Meier says  "if I’d been afraid to deviate too severely from what we already had, I never would have gotten to  the right size in time before the game shipped". Approach four - flip it on its head In Shovel Knight, Yacht Club wanted to  put an interesting twist on saving your progress.

They wanted a system where players  could risk skipping a checkpoint, in order to get a reward. So they made a checkpoint  that you have to pay to use. If you want, you can skip it and save the cash - but at  the risk of losing more progress when you die.

But this system didn't really work. It was  complicated to use and visually unintuitive. And, worse still, it had a big balance problem: novice  players, who needed the checkpoints the most, were also least likely to have the  funds to save their game.

No good. So the solution was to flip  the concept upside down. Instead of paying money to save your game.

. .  what if you get paid if you don't save?

So now, saving is automatic - removing that  complexity. And it's free - so novice players never lose out. But it also has  that spicy twist of risk and reward - cocky platforming experts can intentionally  break the checkpoint to make more money.

Sometimes you're close to the right solution,  but you just need to reverse the formula. Approach five - find the solution elsewhere So when Naughty Dog was working  on the UI for The Last of Us, they initially let Joel upgrade his weapons at  any point, from a tab in the inventory UI. But that created problems - it added complexity  to the minimalist interface, some players missed the option entirely, and because  players could upgrade whenever they wanted, they'd typically just upgrade as soon as they  could afford something.

Whatever was cheapest. Now the developers could have iterated  on this UI design for ages, moving the upgrade button to different screens or  changing how it was communicated to the player. But the ultimate solution was to  pull upgrading out of the UI entirely.

Now, the game has upgrade benches. These are  specific points in the world where you can modify your weapon, meaning you might not have a  chance to upgrade for an hour or two. This ensured that players actually engaged with the system. 

And because they had more resources saved up, they were able to boost the weapons they enjoyed  using the most - not just the cheapest. They also spent more time assessing all the options,  and made plans for the next upgrade bench. Remember that games are a massive  web of interconnected systems - so sometimes you can fix a problem in one area,  by actually making a change somewhere else.

Approach six - solve multiple issues at once During the madcap multiplayer  sessions of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the designers found it annoying to die - and  then have to wait until the end of the level, or a checkpoint, to come back  to life. So they needed a fix.

The first idea was that knocked-out players  could randomly spawn inside question mark blocks. Which is pretty cute. But they kept going  until they found a better solution: players would come back in a bubble, and their team mates  have to pop it to get them back into the game.

This didn't just solve the original problem.  It also helped fix another one - sometimes, novice players get to a tricky bit that they  can’t tackle. So, now, they can intentionally put themselves in a bubble, let the better players  make progress, and then pop back out when it's safe.

This one feature made dying more fun, and  also let players dictate their own difficulty. Mario's daddy, Shigeru Miyamoto, has that  classic quote - "A good idea is something that does not solve just one single problem, but  rather can solve multiple problems at once. " So, sometimes, it's best to wait for a solution  that also has other benefits for the game.

Approach seven - study player behaviour Okay, let's finally get back  to that Gears of War story. So, remember - Epic had to boost the health  points of enemies, because advanced players kept doing perfect reloads and getting a damage  boost. But this screwed over beginner players who ignored the system entirely and were now  getting wiped out by these amped up bad guys.

But Epic noticed another difference between  these two player types. Top shooter players rarely finish a clip - they reload before they're  out. But novices would typically shoot until the clip is empty, and let the game automatically  reload.

So this offered up a solution. The devs secretly boosted the power of  the last few bullets in a clip. Dubbed them "magic bullets".

And so - on the whole  - only novice players would get this buff, giving them a similar advantage to the  expert players with their perfect reloads. Most of the problems in game design are  derived from watching how players interact with the game. So why not that use that  same approach in order to find the solution?

Okay, so now we have a solution, we can implement  it. But there's still a few more challenges ahead. The first is second-order effects.

In Rainbow  Six Siege, Ubisoft knew that it needed to fix its overpowered shotgun. So they nerfed  it - and it had the intended effect. The shotgun was no longer outperforming the other  weapons.

But it also had a knock-on effect: because the shotgun is a great defensive  weapon, this nerf made it much harder for defenders to win against attackers.  They just couldn't hold them back. Fixing a problem in one place can create another  problem elsewhere.

Designers should be aware of how different systems might interlink, and  be smart about avoiding these issues. Or, perhaps, figure out how to solve these  new problems. The solution for Siege was to reduce the time limit on rounds.

Because  defenders automatically win if time runs out, this made that side more likely to  succeed, bringing the balance back in line. Another challenge is finding the resources to  implement those changes. Late in development of Prey, Arkane's designers realised they  needed more monster variety on the space station - but they didn't really have the time,  artists, or AI programmers to make anything new.

So the designers found a creative solution: the poltergeist. This enemy is invisible  and attacks by throwing nearby physics objects. It needed dramatically fewer  resources than the other foes in the game.

Prey's designer Ricardo Bare says "good designers  understand how to solve problems within the constraints that they have", and adds  that the poltergeist actually ended up being one of his favourite enemies in the  game. A lot of game design issues crop up late in development - or even after the  game has gone live. So sometimes the best solution is just the one that you can actually  achieve with the time and resources available.

And finally, you need to test if the  solution actually has the desired effect, by going back to those playtesters,  or getting fresh eyes. Halo's Jaime Griesemer recommends that you don't tell  your playtesters how you fixed the issue as that can bias their experience. Just  see if the problem has been resolved.

If not - well, hopefully, like in the case  of Diablo 3's rapid iteration, this helped you figure out what the actual problem is, and  you can reframe the question and start again. As I've been discovering myself, game design  is all about solving problems. Very few ideas survive first contact with players.

And so  the best game designers aren't those who can come up with good ideas - they're the ones who  can also figure out good solutions to problems. This video was absolutely packed with stories of  clever developers solving game design problems. It's like, my favourite genre.

There were loads  more that I couldn't fit in, so if you're a GMTK Patron on the Bonus Video tier, you can now check  out a special tie-in video with even more stories. Oh, and what about if your game has already been  released and then you start getting criticism? Well, then you should check out this video to  find out how to handle negative player feedback.

See you soon.